Jonathan Payne News

Playwrights Horizons today announced its 2021-22 season. The influential Off-Broadway institution returns to in-person performance after 18 months in which, under new artistic leadership, it has marked its 50th anniversary and reflected deeply on the role the theater should play in the life of its city, its country, and the world.

The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues will premiere on Tuesday, June 29th, with an all new series of unforgettable performances.

An impressive cohort of stars took to the virtual stage last night for a new edition of The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues, available on IGTV @24hourplays, and on The 24 Hour Plays' Facebook and YouTube channels.

Tonight, The 24 Hour Plays brings together one of its brightest groups of stars yet for a new edition of The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues, available on IGTV @24hourplays, on The 24 Hour Plays' Facebook and YouTube channels.

A star-studded new edition of The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues in support of Release Aging People In Prison (RAPP) streams tonight.

PLAY AT HOME, the new micro-commissioning initiative begun by Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theater, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, has announced their 100th playwright commission, ensuring that $50,000 has gone directly to playwrights in need in this time of crisis.

The Playwrights Realm (Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereira) will presents the 2020 INK'D Festival of New Plays, showcasing new works by this year's Realm Writing Fellows Tanya Everett, Maya Macdonald, Tasha Gordon-Solmon, and Christopher Reyes (February 24-27). The festival's plays offer vast tonal and stylistic variation while cohering around complex contemplations of structural issues. INK'D has proven to be an indispensable launching pad for the voices driving the future of playwriting. This year's powerful slate continues to introduce audiences to a diversity of fresh perspectives, thereby underscoring theater's potential to expand the possibilities of dramatic storytelling and engage with the world around it.

The Fire This Time Festival, the destination for early career and emerging playwrights from the African diaspora, announces its 2020 dates. The 14-day festival, presented in collaboration with FRIGID New York, which annually honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will take place from January 20 to February 2, 2020. This year, seven commissioned dramatists will be presented in repertoire as part of the annual celebration held at the Kraine Theater in the East Village.

Playwrights Horizons (Artistic Director Tim Sanford, Managing Director Leslie Marcus) will present a return engagement of the The Movement Theatre Company (Producing Artistic Leadership Team David Mendizábal, Deadria Harrington, Eric Lockley, Taylor Reynolds) staging of Aleshea Harris' What to Send Up When It Goes Down, directed by Whitney White. The production runs June 24 - July 19, 2020 (opening June 30, 2020) at Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42 Street). 'It's an honor to include this extraordinary piece in our Redux Series, which expands the audience reach for vital new plays that premiered to limited runs elsewhere,' Playwrights Horizons Associate Artistic Director Adam Greenfield said. 'Aleshea Harris' play is an urgent, visceral, kaleidoscopic reckoning with racialized police violence in America-and a theatrical experience that demands our attention.'

The Playwrights Realm today announces recipients of two career-propelling development programs the organizationa?"led by Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereiraa?"offers to gifted, incisive, and diverse playwrights. Now entering its thirteenth season, The Realm has continually produced work by brave new voices and expanded its commitment to providing holistic support to playwrights striving to make a life in the arts.

A HUMAN BEING, OF A SORT represents an examination of what may lie beneath the surface. It suggests we look more closely at a reality complicated by context. It presents many of the paradoxes seemingly present in human interaction. It is a period piece but also quite timely and relevant. We find ourselves questioning the constructs of control, freedom, power, faith, and the notion of perception versus reality. Is it possible to know what lies in the hearts and minds of men or any other creature? Can we ever truly know, why the caged bird sings?

The Playwrights Realm announces its 2019-2020 season productions, with world premieres of Anna Moench's Mothers (beginning September 13, 2019 at the Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W 42nd St), and Noah Diaz's Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally (beginning April 3, 2020 at A.R.T./New York Theatres, 502 W 53rd St), two bold new works from early-career playwrights about parental care-and what that means in circumstances that have catapulted beyond anyone's control.Inconjunction with Mothers, the Playwrights Realm proudly pilots the Radical Parent-Inclusion Project, which seeks to dismantle the barriers preventing parent-artists from succeeding in the theater by illuminating, creating, and tracking new pathways of access and approaches to production.

The Playwrights Realm announces the 10th Anniversary INK'D Festival of New Plays (April 2019), the annual showcase of new works by The Realm's Writing Fellows. Over the past decade, the festival has introduced audiences to a diversity of fresh perspectives on theater's ability to address the world around it-and has proven to be an indispensible launching pad for the voices driving the future of playwriting.

Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced its lineup for its 65th season. Among those set to perform are Uma Thurman in Ghosts, Jesse Tyler Ferguson in Grand Horizons, and more. 

Just last night, Williamstown Theatre Festival celebrated its annual Gala: "An Evening with Audra McDonald" honoring WTF Board Chairman Matt Harris with special appearances by Eden Espinosa, Jessica Hechtand Martyna Majok. Check out photos from inside the special night below!

The Playwrights Realm (Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereira) announces Beyond the Realm (February 2019), a month-long festival showcasing bold new works-in-progress by four boundary-pushing playwrights, with four workshops of new plays by MJ Kaufman, Nia Witherspoon, Michael Yates Crowley, and Asiimwe Deborah Kawe. Responsiveness and a commitment to playwrights' needs are at the heart of the Realm's practice; with the launch of this new program-in lieu of a second full-length production this season-the Realm seizes the opportunity to devote the beginning of the year to these four playwrights testing and honing their exhilarating new works. Throughout a month of programming, the definitions of theater will be challenged as the festival creates new ways of presenting live storytelling and blurs the lines that divide creators from spectators. Tickets for the Festival are free and reservations open to the general public on Tuesday, January 22nd. Donors receive early access starting January 17th. For more information, visit http://www.playwrightsrealm.org/beyond/.

The Dramatists Guild of America is the originator of the Dramatists Guild Fellows program, with a mission is to enhance the sense of community among developing American dramatists by offering a year-long workshop designed to augment their training with practical experience and career information resources.

The Bushwick Starr is thrilled to announce our 2018-19 STARR READING SERIES. This annual program allows us to celebrate and explore the plays of the city's most exciting playwrights. We feature new work from a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers who are approaching writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. We are proud to continue to offer this ongoing series to our audiences FREE of charge. This program is curated by William Burke, Jillian Walker, and John Del Gaudio.

OBIE award winning The Fire This Time Festival  (TFTT) announces today its 10th anniversary festival dates and the lineup of featured playwrights who comprise the centerpiece of the annual 10-minute play program.

Over the past twelve years, The Playwrights Realm, led by Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereira, has continually produced work by brave new voices and expanded its commitment to providing holistic support to playwrights striving to make a life in the arts. With its 2018-2019 Writing Fellowship, The Playwrights Realm is proud to grant a career-propelling honor to four tremendously talented playwrights exhibiting drive and commitment to the form: Bleu Beckford-Burrell (Lyons Pride), Sarah Einspanier (I LOVE SEAN), Keelay Gipson (#NewSlaves), andElse C. Went (Saving Throw).